The wheel is a good invention, but it doesn’t go well with peanuts. That’s why beer is the best invention of all. For most people, the first drink that they ever try out is beer. It’s light, it’s easy to drink, and it has great taste.
Everyone starts off with a light version that has anywhere between 3 and 4 percent alcohol, and then they move upwards to see how much they can handle. Eventually, you come to IPAs, and specific microbrewer batches that tingle your senses and make your taste buds happy. Click here to read more.
Even though humanity has been brewing for thousands of years and there are tons of choices on the shelves, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t try out the process yourself. Being involved in the process makes the drink much better in the end. Here are all of the things you need to know.
The basics
Every single beer in the world is made from four ingredients. That might seem like a little, but the combination of water, yeast, grains, and hops is used to create anything from Bud Light to Guinness. Let’s start right at the beginning.
One of the main qualities of this beverage is bitterness. Even if the taste is sweet, there’s supposed to be a light bitterness that can be felt on the tongue. That’s why hops are used. This ingredient releases an alpha acid which is responsible for the bitter taste. In order for the acids to be released, the resins need to be boiled for at least 60 minutes.
At the end of the day, chemical reactions are taking place, and those things take time. The best whiskey takes decades to mature, but beer is a bit faster. The important thing to remember here is that the percentage of the acid released depends on the region, variety, and the year when the plant grew.
For that reason, you need to keep a few metrics on a separate sheet of paper to determine which quantity performs best for future tries. You can go to https://abs-commercial.com/20-bbl-brewhouse/ to read more. Apart from the start, this ingredient is also used at the end because it can impact the smell and the aroma.
Most people think that we taste everything through our mouths, but that’s not completely true. Our noses play a large role in tasting. If you don’t believe it, try eating a slice of pizza with your nose closed. It will feel like you’re eating something completely different.
Next on the list are grains. These seeds are mainly used to create the body, color, aroma, and flavor. Some people decide on specialty variants, while others want to keep it more traditional. These seeds are crushed before being added to the mix.
If you don’t have the necessary equipment to do it at home, you can bring them to a specialty shop that will take care of the process. It’s important to remember that the crushed seeds need to be utilized fast.
Fermentation is a process that we only recently figured out how it works. A thousand years ago, people didn’t have a clue on how it impacted fermentation. Yeast isn’t a plant like the other components. Instead, it’s a fungus that has the quality of transforming the sugars of the malt into alcohol.
For this to succeed, you need to keep it at a specific temperature, and you can use either a dry form or a liquid one. A couple of decades ago, professional brewers made fun of people that were using dry yeast because that was considered to be a sign of poor quality.
However, the fashions have changed, as well as the tastes of connoisseurs, and there are all sorts of things that you can experiment with. Both of these versions have their own pros and cons. For example, liquid yeast needs to be used instantly and with more care.
If you don’t use it quickly, it can go bad. Both options can be used to get the same type of beer. The interesting thing is that there’s a natural limit on how high the percentage of alcohol can go. Now, we have the technology to trap the alcohol and add it again into the mix. However, if you were to go the all-natural way, the end result would be quite weak. That’s why all of the ancient wines and beers had an ABV of 3 to 7 percent.
The water
Since every alcohol is more than 90 percent water, we can confidently say that it plays a pretty large role in the process. Tap water, for example, has traces of chlorine which give it a specific odor. That’s true for plenty of countries.
If you leave it unfiltered, the end result is not going to have a beautiful fragrance. The pH level needs to be on the moderate level of harness, and the level of alkalinity needs to be low or moderate at most. Luckily, it’s easy to filter all of these components out, and it’s not expensive at all. If you don’t want to be doing everything on your own, you can choose to get it from a place that sells it as you want it.
A few final words
Before you do anything, make sure that all of your equipment is completely clean. This means that you’ll need to sanitize each part individually. This is one of the most important steps, and don’t skip it to save time.
As soon as everything is completely sanitized, you should move on to the brew. This is the process that you’ll have to put the most work. It requires a lot of attention, and you need to overlook the cocktail of ingredients as it boils.
You might not get everything right the first time, and that’s okay. Most people brew a couple of times per year and learn from their mistakes. Getting it wrong shouldn’t discourage you. Instead, take a notebook and write down all of the things you did right and wrong. This will improve your skill over time.
